


In The Long Lost Tribe

by hazelandglasz



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Past Lives, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:48:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelandglasz/pseuds/hazelandglasz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You ride a subway through underground New York City and discover you can remember the pasts of your fellow passengers" for Klaine please !</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Long Lost Tribe

As a child, Kurt was perceived as a very thoughtful one--always caring for his family, offering tea to his grandmother, biscuits to his aunt, that sort of things, and without a question asked or an inquiry before doing it.

Kurt just … knew what people wanted, or needed, and he simply did what he could to make it happen.

As he grows up, Kurt naturally goes with his instincts and his assets.

After high school, he packs his bags, kisses his father, reminds him to take care of himself and how to turn the webcam on, and Kurt flies out to New York.

To settle down, to become an adult, to make a path for himself.

Like the city called for him.

While he looks for a proper apartment, Kurt lands himself in a quiet YMCA not too far from Times Square, and he spends his first night smiling around the bendy end of the straw he uses to drink a cold brew.

After four unfruitful visits, Kurt finds a place that could be “it” : an unassuming building, a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn, an apartment that is the very picture of “fixer-upper” ...`

And yet, for some reason, Kurt cannot imagine himself living anywhere else in the whole of New York.

 _It_ happens on his way back to the YMCA, that day, after he leaves his application for The Apartment.

Kurt is riding the subway, music filling his ears to cover the discussions around him, when he gets a Flash.

It starts with a tinnitus, vaguely irritating and that makes him close his eyes to chase it away, and that’s how he visualizes it.

A vision that shows a middle aged Black man, sporting a moustache and riding this very subway--but the train looks in better shape than it is today, and the outfits are clearly from another era.

Before Kurt can wonder what was that about, the man’s image twirls and swirls, like someone just shaked a bottle, and it changes into a teenage white girl with a pixie haircut and a flapper dress, walking around and looking at the construction site of …

The Flat Iron?

Kurt shakes his head, and his eyes immediately land on an older woman, sitting not too far from him, and she’s bobbing her head to a music he cannot hear.

Just like the girl did in the streets of New York in the 1920s.

Just like the man did in the subway in the 1950s or 1960s.

Kurt frowns and takes out his headphones, looking around him to see if someone else is having a weird …

Something.

A weird episode, let’s settle at that.

As he looks around, his eyes meet a tall, cocky man’s green ones, and Kurt gets a rapid succession of Flashes, like drops of inks in a glass of water.

A Cuban man crossing the sea to get to the United States.

A Russian woman fighting during the Russian Revolution.

A teenage boy from somewhere on Earth that Kurt just can’t identify, running around and playing tricks.

All across those faces, across the times, across Time really, Kurt can tell, the same crooked smirk etched to mock and affirm a certain sense of superiority.

Kurt blinks, and he searches through the whole car.

Like, this pregnant Latina woman? Yeah, she had that twitch when she was a gold digger in what is today’s San Francisco.

Like this adorable little boy? He looked at the world with the same determination on his face when he was a woman writing her first novel after her divorce to get back at her cheating husband.

Kurt almost misses his stop, focused as he was on those stories, and he stands on the platform in the span of two trains passing him by.

What did he see?

What did he … remember?

It looks like past lives, like he saw his fellow passengers’ souls’ journeys.

But that’s just insane, isn’t it?

Kurt takes his time to go back to the YMCA, getting dizzy with each passing Flash he gets on his way, and he locks himself in the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face.

A thought makes him stop, and he looks up to the mirror.

He focuses, trying to get the same … vibe he got before seeing all of this, and it hits him with all his senses.

It’s not just a vision, this time--and it makes sense, after all, it is him, the very essence of his being that he’s reliving. Kurt feels like he can smell, and taste everything his past selves smelled and tasted and saw.

When it starts, it’s no longer drops in a glass of water; it’s a twirl, a maelstrom of colors and images and sounds.

One of the builders of Empire State Building.

A tango dancer in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th century.

A nurse during the Prussian Wars somewhere in Europe.

A lawyer in Barcelona under King Ferdinand VII’s reign.

A fisherwoman in Canada.

Kurt gasps as the swirls come to an halt and he gets back to his own body.

Fuck. Him.

Skipping dinner--but still snacking on the cookies he brought from home--Kurt tries to make sense of it all.

Is this … ability something that came from New York itself?

Or has he always been like this, in a … fuzzier way?

Maybe his tendency to--to guess at what people want comes from this talent? Except that he was never completely aware of that, and he just went with the impressions he got from it?

“Oh my God …,” he mumbles, staring into space as he plays with the half of a cookie.

In the days he has to wait for a reply from the agency for the Bushwick apartment—oh shit, maybe that’s where his past self lived. That would certainly explain the instant connection he felt with the place, wow—Kurt decides to ...

Experiment a little.

In his coffee shop—the Barista used to be a henchman ; quite the stretch to make from her current silhouette, but she keeps cracking her knuckles the way he did.

At the park—where that mother of twins lived a past life as a matchmaker in a Jewish village in Poland. Still making pairs, Kurt supposes with a snicker he hides behind his travel mug.

In the subway—it’s more difficult to focus, there, so many stories jumping at him—where Kurt tries to hone his new skill.

And that’s how he finds him.

A man whose Fate, past selves, soul, whatever, seems to have followed his through time and space.

In his current incarnation, the man looks pleasant—exactly Kurt’s type, if he’s being honest : dark hair, slightly darker skin, expressive eyes skipping around a page of a book while he bops his head to the music in his headphones, plump lips that curl into a smile at something before focusing on the words, the ghost of the smile lingering ...

But in his past ...

The man stood next to Kurt one of the beams of the soon-to-be Empire State Building, riveting the structure securely.

He made Kurt dance around the ballrooms of Buenos Aires, a sure-handed partner with a thin moustache and strong shoulders.

He arrived on a gurney in Kurt’s care, his uniform covered in blood and still clutching his baionnette to return to the front.

He was the housekeeper of his lawyer self, making sure that he stopped working to eat and sleep every now and then.

He left the British army to join the fisherwoman’s tribe up North.

Through it all, the man’s smile, its warmth, is the constant that helped Kurt stand taller and face the adversities of their lives.

Kurt returns to the present and stares shamelessly at the man.

Kurt is an incurable romantic, sure, but soulmates ? _For real_ ?

Jesus Christ in boarding shorts.

The man seems to feel his gaze on him, and he looks up from his book, straight at Kurt.

Kurt _could_ look away—he _should_ look away—but he can’t.

The man—his man—cocks his head to the side, curious about Kurt’s intent, and he gestures at his face.

Kurt’s eyes widen.

 _Do I have something on my face_ , the man mouths at him, and Kurt barely manages to keep a manic laughter from coming out of his mouth.

He shakes his head. _Sorry_ , he mouths back, expecting the man to shrug it off and return to his book, to his life, to whatever fills his days.

Not to close his book and stand up, crossing the car to come closer to Kurt.

Jesus Christ on a roller coaster ride.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“I’m Blaine.”

“K-Kurt.”

When they shake hands--because apparently, Kurt’s soulmate has not forgotten his manners even through the oddity of the situation--it’s not just their past lives that Kurt sees through his mind.

It’s all the times they shared.

All the love they shared, through time.

“Have we met?” Blaine asks softly, wrapping his fingers around the bar closest to Kurt so that the moves of the subway don’t separate them. “You look … familiar, God I’m so sorry, it sounds like such a line.”

Blaine looks down at his feet for a moment, smiling as if embarrassed, before looking back at Kurt.

The decision is obvious; Kurt is not about to send Blaine running with a “We’ve never met in this life, but we kept on finding each other in the past ones. What about a cup of coffee?”.

“I must have one of those faces,” he replies instead.

“No, no, I don’t--I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“No,” Blaine repeats, voice growing stronger. “Your face is not ‘one of those’.”

“Thanks?”

“It was meant as a compliment,” Blaine says, twisting his mouth in a grimace of regret. “I’m sorry, I’m a little rusty in the romance department.”

“Let’s start over,” Kurt says, stepping closer. “Hi, I’m Kurt, and I love drinking mocchas and people-watching.”

Blaine beams at him--oh, not the first time Kurt has seen that smile, and yet, it’s the very first. For them. In this life--and shakes his hand. “Hi, I’m Blaine,” he replies, with extra energy in his voice, “and I love trying new drinks every two months and classics sci-fi movies.”

“What’s the flavor of the month?” Kurt asks.

“Soy milk caramel macchiato.”

“Interesting.”

“May I _interest_ you in one, so you can see for yourself?”

“Smooth.”

“I’m trying to be,” Blaine says softly, looking up at Kurt through his eyelashes--unfair--, “for you.”

Kurt can feel his smile widening. “Lead the way.”

((Years later, when Blaine proposes and tells Kurt--and some passersby--that on the day he met Kurt, it felt like their souls were recognizing each other, Kurt will not let him finish and topple him to the ground to kiss him. And then he’ll tell him how right he was.

But for now, two soy milk caramel macchiatos will do just fine.))


End file.
